What good is it to post on the complaints that Karl Rove, the editors of the Wall Street Journal, the editors of the Washington Post, etc. have made about the nomination of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General when Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name from nomination?
Maybe I’m behind the times. Who is posting?
Anyway. Gaetz was always a strange nomination. I’m sure there is some very inside baseball explanation.
I think the Hegseth nomination criticism is overwrought. OK, he’s not an establishment guy. The Pentagon is a mess. Let’s see how he does as, obviously, a disruptor.
Gabbard? Don’t know that much. But I do know that I immediately recoil at claims she is some sort of rabid Putin/Bashaar lackey. This playbook from Dems has gotten old. And hey, have they cleaned the urine stains off the hookers peed on in Russia yet?
It seems to me the Dems have come to the point of beclowning themselves with wild eyed claims about Trump and his appointments.
Appointments always vary in the eyes of multiple constituencies. Again, I didn’t understand Gaetz, but I don’t see existential danger in the others, I see policy perspectives (and stomping of feet and holding of breath by Dems still in grieving). And let’s be real. There are backstops.
That’s certainly a factor. IMO Trump now understands that what I’ve been calling the nomenklatura and is more generally referred to as The Swamp, The Blob, Deep State, etc. is a major impediment. He’s choosing people who aren’t members and they’re being opposed for the same reason.
I don’t think it’s 5D chess. He’s a Trump loyalist. Full stop. RFK, Jr. is being opposed partially because he’s not a doc, partially because of his anti-vax stance, and partially because Trump appointed him.
Well, the bizarre Harris/Walz nomination showed that behind the facade of primaries and conventions there is a Deep Democrat Party that makes the decisions. Likewise, Trump is about to demonstrate that there is a permanent Deep State that rules independently of the Congress/Presidency/Court facade.
We should see the results of the Geatz ethics investigation. Congress works for us and we pay their salaries. We should be able to see the ethical behavior of the people who work for us, they are not royalty. He likely runs for office again.
On RFK, most docs would not have the skills to run HHS, so it’s not because he isn’t a doc. It’s not just because he is anti-vax as he has a number of beliefs not compatible with available evidence, such as believing that poppers cause AIDS or psychiatric drugs are the cause of school shootings. In common parlance he is a kook. He makes his living by promoting false ideas and taking advantage of the people who want to believe those ideas.
Oppose him because Trump nominated him? I guess that generally be true of all his nominations but there is a huge difference between someone like Rubio or RFK or Hegseth or Gabbard. While I might disagree with Rubio’s policy he is qualified and knowledgeable. None of those three I have listed have either of those qualities.
Disruptor? I keep hearing that. So Dave and Drew. Do you think your businesses would have been better off if someone who knew nothing about what you did or about your businesses would have been placed in charge? Note that i am not suggesting having someone with managerial experience at another company come in and take over. That happens not infrequently in the real world. I am suggesting that you take someone with zero managerial experience and no knowledge in the form of experience, education or training appropriate to what your business was doing? In my case for example I have a hard time thinking we would have been better off if our CEO was replaced by say a history professor from a local college, or the Chair of surgery replaced by a mechanic.
Steve
I agree with that—I certainly have no problem with it.
‘He’s choosing people who aren’t members and they’re being opposed for the same reason.’
You wrote a piece a while back asking “what would be different in Trump 2.0.” I made this very point. Don’t hire backstabbers.
“We should see the results of the Geatz (sic) ethics investigation”
Of course, steve. That’s stating the obvious. But I think you need to remember a name: Greenberg. And some interesting goings on with the FBI.
“..who knew nothing about what you did or about your businesses would have been placed in charge?”
You bated the question, steve, with “nothing.” Further, so many problems in bureaucracy or just business in general arise due to organization disfunction. Not the technical subspecialties; or perhaps its the organization that poisons the latter. Turnaround situations and individuals/consultants hired to fix them are loaded with attitude/policy and organization change agents. I find it hard to believe The Pentagon will suffer too much under a Hegseth. Its a mess. He can be replaced, you know.
Shorter: the root of most organizational problems is the people and their worldviews. Even call it culture. Its not the front line accountants, finance guys, sales, marketing or the shop floor types. Only the people who manage from above.
“He’s choosing people who aren’t members and they’re being opposed for the same reason.”
Against my better judgment I went over and read the Gaetz thread at OTB. Towards the end someone noted Bondi’s nomination. Right on cue…………..she is the devil. At OTB and many other places its simply “if Trump nominated them, they are bad.”
Interestingly, I saw a clip from a guy on CNN noting that she was a bad pick “because she knows what she’s doing! She will be effective.”
Alrighty, then.
In his reaction to operation Barbarossa , Stalin purged tens of thousands of military officers and was victorious in the end. They surely pointed out the importance of their military expertise.
The opposition to Bondi should be expected but it’s the normal kind of opposition. Like with Rubio, I might disagree with her beliefs or policies but she is at least qualified.
I mostly agree about culture. Having turned around about 10 failing hospitals now I would say that it’s not unusual to find bad frontline people working throughout a failing organization, but it’s ultimately management that is responsible. Which is why Hegseth is a poor choice. He has done some frontline work in a pretty narrow area for one branch of the military. He has not worked in management other than relatively small groups at any level. What he does is talk on TV. Is it possible that he is an instinctually great leader? Sure. Is it likely? No. There are hundreds of other people you could hire who could be disruptors who also have the knowledge and experience that would be more likely to make it work.
RFK is worse. He is a politician from a political family. He has not worked in any medically related field like insurance, pharma, devices or any organization providing care. He has not managed any large organization before. His only relevant “experience” is reading medical literature he doesnt understand and distorting which AFAICT is mostly so he can make a good income and have a road to power by feeding these false beliefs back to people who want to believe them. To be clear, like many good grifters he sometimes says stuff that makes sense, at least at some level, but at heart he is a kook/grifter without the knowledge or skills to effectively lead.
Stalin’s purge was removing officers that were loyal to Trotsky. It was well before the war. He did not remove all of his senior officers and replace them with an inexperienced junior officer with little experience or knowledge.
Steve
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_Red_Army_Purge
And Trump is looking at a military loyal to DEI and Obama era politics.
Col Jennifer Pritzker comes to mind.
I’ve noticed a pattern in his picks that concerns me a bit, they’re all people who have gained much of their exposure and apparently Trump’s attention through television, which seems to be a large part of his world.
I surely wish them all the best.
Pritzker last served on active duty in 1985 and officially retired in 2001. AFAICT she did not come out as trans until much later, in the late aughts of early 2010s. Given your extensive active duty time I am sure you know more than I do but from both my time and from the people I hired who either come from active duty or remain on active reserve duty the DEI stuff is pretty minimal. An occasional lecture or email. While there have been complaints it has recently made recruiting difficult that is a recurring issue. We had recruiting problems before DEI existed and will have them after DEI goes away. While you can make the argument that just having a DEI program is a turn off for young white males so they arent enlisting its hard not to notice that young white males are in general avoiding jobs with a manual labor component.
Steve